What Engineering & Management Books Should They Have Written?

I'm looking for the sort of titles that would make you exclaim, "Say what?" if you saw them on the shelves of your local bookstore.

I recently read an amazing book called How to Sharpen Pencils: a Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants, With Illustrations Showing Current Practice. What? You think I'm joking? Well, click here if you doubt my veracity.

Actually, How to Sharpen Pencils is a wonderful book -- one of the funniest things I've read recently (and that includes my annual performance review). But then this started me to thinking that it might be fun to compile a list of unusual and/or thought-provoking titles (and authors) for books on engineering and management.

I'm thinking of the engineering or management (or science, technology, and math) equivalents of such titles as The Mime Alphabet Book,Knitting with Dog Hair,How to be Inappropriate, or C is for Chafing (where the latter is a kid-friendly A-to-Z on the art of running). Yes, once again, believe it or not, all of these are real titles. What I'm looking for are fictitious titles for books in our technology world -- the sort of titles that would make you exclaim, "Say what?" if you saw them on the shelves of your local bookstore.

Now, you probably wouldnít be too surprised to hear that I have a few ideas of my own, but I donít want to interfere with your creative genius. I'll let you go first. Donít forget that, in addition to the title of the book, it would also be great to have an appropriate author name to go with it.

The scans of some old "advertisements" that Thomas Payerle developed (with my help) for Random Howe's Book-of-the-Month Club might be of interest even though they do not quite fit this catagory. One has titles such as The Search for Terrestrial Intelligence and Do-It-Yourself Cerebral Repair (with brief descriptions); the other includes titles such as Flying Saucer Cover-up? and The Human Brain: a User's Guide.

(If you enjoy such odd humor, you might also enjoy the other scans [of advertisements for Big Sam's Anatomical Warehouse]. Sadly, some of the other bulletin board flyers we developed while at Washington University have not survived: Nunzio's Mortuary and Pizzeria [with free pick-up and delivery], a notice for a buyer of teeth named T. Faerie, and a notice of a lost Protoceratops [from an institute of temporal studies] are the ones I remember and there were some other [now lost] Big Sam's ads. The artistic quality was not great, but they did provide a few smiles.)

The title I remember, from 1981, was "Nailing Jelly To A Tree" by Jerry Willis.

Considering the success of the "Dummies" books, and the copycat "idiots guide", I suspect "Directional Derivatives For Brain-dead [censored]" would be insulting enough to get massive sales.

Seriously however: a series of books for "advanced dummies" or even "moderately ignorant" would be interesting. Instead of assuming no prior knowledge, they'd start with some basic skills assumed [and a reference if the book proves too hard].